Tenneson Woolf

I run programs on inner leadership. It’s doing the stuff in here that helps with the stuff out there.

Introducing — Becoming & Belonging (B&B)
A Series of Practices To Grow Inner Leadership,
Connection, Courage, and Compassion

Becoming — Becoming who we wish to be. Becoming who we are meant to be. Learning. Forgetting. Learning again. In relationship with everything. Flying. Falling. Regret. Celebration. Insight and intuition. Plans and accomplishments. Re-storied to celebrated presence in life.

Belonging — Belonging to the human condition. To similarity and difference. To community. To wonder. To aliveness. To spark of yes. To life flowing. To life inviting.

This brings so much together. I want to teach it, love it, live it with others. Kindly. Ferociously too. It’s all part of the Becoming & Belonging Series for you, for us, for humans. From my heart. With invitation to your heart.

What Can B&B and Tenneson Do For / With You?

Help you get more wise. Find it together. Get more clear. More kind. More centered. More ready for the storm. More ready to enjoy the storm. Help clarify your story. Or change it. We might discover next steps. I can help play in mystery. Help grow a heart and mind to get to the real work. Change the way you facilitate. And think. And live. And love who you are when you do what you do. We might discover the good stuff on how to live, lead, love.

Programs in progress for B&B.

Come play.

Who’s Tenneson — Me, Now — Claiming Essence

I’m Tenneson. You can see from the other pages of this site that most of my work over the last 30 years has been as a Group Process Facilitator, Coach, and Trainer. With groups, teams, leadership programs, leadership retreats. In faith communities and other not-for-profit groups. In universities. In a few corporate programs. I’ve helped to steward key initiatives that have influenced many people toward more kind and conscious ways of going together. The Circle Way, The Art of Hosting, Self-Organizing Systems — these are all orientations that have guided and grounded me.

I’m also a later-in-life poet — I quite love essence. I love thoughtful phrases. I love marking things that are raw and honest, and things inspiring and encouraging. I quite love integrating poetry into group process facilitation and coaching.

I’m now 62, in the early stages of what my friend Bob calls “the third thirty.” I feel older. I sometimes feel clunky saying that. But I don’t generally feel old. I’m learning quite a bit about how to be this age that is different from when I was 42 and from when I was 22. And learning about how to best contribute with those that are 42 and 22 and 62 and 82. It’s less leading the way with so much tenacity of action. It’s more nuancing clarity of purpose and essence, just like in my poetry. It’s about being with others to finding the deep meaning, the deep center, the life-giving invitation. And then to encourage, practice, and support. 

This picture is an important symbol that is both helping me to find my story, and to improve it. That’s me with my Sweetheart Dana — a recent winter trip to Wyoming. We found each other late in life as young sixty-somethings. Dana also comes from an educator background. For 25 years she’s been convening medical education conferences and supporting peer-based medical learning communities. It’s fun to see. We are big parts of change and learning in each other’s lives and in our shared life, companioning now and all of the nexts.

Story, Now —  What Makes You You and Me Me?

So, we all have stories. With parts that change. And with parts that are a consistent thread from era to era. I often ask people in groups, “What makes you you?” It’s a question meant to create reflection and connection. It’s great in the deeper listening that is Circle and other Circle-based formats.

Well, I’ve had a few people ask for that next layer of story in me. As they’ve explored how I might help. They’ve asked what makes me, me. What’s my deeper story? So that they can trust me to help with their deeper story. With honesty about what has been me. With authenticity of what is now. 

Overall I’m pretty transparent. It’s part of the authentic necessity that baselines good work and good life. So, I’m naming a few headlines below. Each is rather important as you might imagine. Many represent years of refining fire. Some a few years of repression and avoidance. Some have been lasting and enduring joys. So, no particular order. Just some of the big things that make me me in my work with leaders, communities, teams, and way-finders.

• I’m a father of three, adults now. In their adult lives. I miss them. I’m proud of them.
• Marriage is part of my story. So is divorce.  
• My oldest, my daughter, is now a mother. She’s married to a great guy. Love my granddaughter.
• My middle, my oldest son, is exploring new edges in career and in family. In joy and in sorrow.
• My youngest, my youngest son, was adopted at birth. He’s black. I love his gentle heart. He’s exploring college, but really I think, purpose.
• I’m a child of suicide. My Dad took his life when he was 34 and I was 14.
• Grew up in a really tight family — mom, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents.
• I was a sports kid. I loved baseball and hockey. My Dad was my baseball coach for a few years.
• I was pretty skinny and wiry in build. Which meant I had some underdog in me and felt I needed to be extra crafty and clever.
• I had neat handwriting as a child. Teachers at Braemar Elementary liked me for that.
• I was also good at math as a kid. Until I wasn’t ,which was toward the end of high school. Definitely not good at it in college.
• As a boy I vacationed annually with my Grandparents. Granny and Grampa Gould would take me, my older sister, and my two younger cousins pop-up tent-trailer camping for two weeks into British Columbia’s Okanagan area.
• I love dogs (perhaps was one in a former life).
• I’ve learned to love our cat — I love cat naps in the afternoon sun.
• My first job was at a grocery store. Bagging groceries. Sweeping floors. Stocking shelves.
• I’ve lived in and out of a faith community.
• Sweetheart Dana, Dana + Tenn, is a rather cool part of my story. We met as young 60-somethings, neither expecting life companions and yet here we are, getting that and more.
• I’ve travelled a lot for work — mostly North America, but some in South America, Europe, South Africa, Asia, Australia
• I’m super in to how inner meets outer and how “now” meets the “longer arc.”

And, and…

Check what this means for programs and community I’d love for you to join.

Who’s Tenneson? What’s Been Important Over The Years?

I’m a Poet, a Coach, and a Group Process Facilitator.

I’m also a consultant, workshop leader, and teacher. I am committed to improving collaboration and imagination in groups, teams, communities, and organizations — to help us be in times such as these with consciousness, kindness, and learning. My work for 25+ years has been to design and lead meetings in participative formats. From strategic visioning with boards, to large conference design, to communities just learning to listen again to one another.

I work with groups, organizations, and individuals sorting their way toward more wise, kind, helpful and life-giving ways. Both in short term improvements and long term strategy. Here’s an extensive list of groups I’ve consulted and guided over the years.

As it is with all of us, there is nuance that surrounds and thickens the plot. I’m also a dad. I’m a new grandfather. I’m a brother, a son, an uncle, a nephew, a partner, a friend. I’m an Art of Hosting Steward, a Flow Game Practitioner, and long time Circle Way Facilitator. I’m a Workshop Design Geek — it’s fun to create formats for joyful learning together.

Read on for other ways of saying all of that. The first step is a conversation. Let’s connect.

Coaching as a Group Process Facilitator

Most of the work that I do is leadership development and team building. My efforts are to help people be more wise together, yet also more simple and clear. Most organizations and communities crave this. It’s why I have passion as a Group Process facilitator.

Three orientations — living systems, self-organization, and emergence — inspire and inform all of my work. So does emptiness, breath, and a freshly-picked garden tomato. My approaches are framed to integrate the inner with the outer, and the present moment with the longer arc of time. All of that so as to create sustainable and vibrant systems of human beings doing well with what they most care about.

If you or your group seeks both better meetings, and, yearns to be more curious together, let’s explore that path together. We might find work together that changes everything. We might find journey. We mind find both.

More about Work

Poetry as a Group Process Facilitator

All of my life, I’ve been the kind of person that has had as much interest in the unseen as I have had in the seen. I’ve had interest in the mystery and the mystical, with an inherent hunch that things are not as they seem, despite the human ability to concretize perception.

My love of prosed Poetry is a love of getting to essence. My love of Coaching is a love of guiding to purpose, meaning, direction, and instinct. My love of Group Process Facilitation is inviting group imagination and collaboration. For the bigger picture of things and for the next first steps. My best work is often combining all of this together. Getting to what is more smart, more wise, more purposed — together.

More about Poetry

Background

My education background includes an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in organizational behavior. My work lineages include The Berkana Institute with Margaret Wheatley, The Circle Way with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, and The Art of Hosting with Toke Moeller and Monica Nissen.

I am originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I now live in South Jordan, Utah, on traditional lands of Utes and Goshutes, in a high desert valley that meets the foot of the Oquirrh and Wasatch Mountains.

Consulting & Training

Methodologies

All of my work utilizes participative leadership methods, whether with small teams or large organizations, to help access more of the wisdom already present in a group, and, to help groups be smarter together. I have 25+ years applied experience in numerous settings with The Circle Way, Open Space Technology, The World Cafe and other forms nuanced to particular circumstance.

Read more on methods here.

Frameworks

Behind methods are always frameworks and world views that amplify impact and purpose. Learned and practiced with colleagues over years, I count on several well-trusted orientations. “Two Loops,” “Cynefin,” “The Chaordic Path,” “Divergence & Convergence,” “Visual Harvesting,” “Chaordic Stepping Stones,” “Hobbit Tools,” “Asking Powerful Questions,” and “The Four Fold Path.” I also love creating and evolving new frameworks, both to bring to groups, and to create with them.

Read more on frameworks here.

Coaching and Guiding

My coaching is very much about creating an environment to help people and groups deeply ground the “what,” the “why,” and the “how” of their work. My coaching is a commitment to both the detail of participative design needs, and, the depth of personal awakeness and leadership inquiry. It is very much about creating spaciousness and expansion in what can so often is compressed and contracted.

Much of my coaching happens online utilizing Zoom for video connection. Sessions are typically 60 minutes for individuals and 90 minutes for teams. I utilize a process of inquiry that integrates external observation with internal relevance, and vice versa. And that explores beneath the surface of relevance for the immediate moment that is connected to the longer arc.

Contact Me to Schedule a Call

Reflection & Writing

Daily Writing

It’s typically between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. when I most often wake, whether to morning sunlight or remaining darkness of night. First, when able, I journal privately to catch morning insights that have grown naturally through night sleep. Sometimes dreams. Second, even if just for five minutes, but more typically 20, mediation. My body, my mind, and my heart need to know this spaciousness, particularly in the busiest of times. I continue to learn that I can’t take people to spaciousness in their work if I don’t know it in me. Third, writing. Because that’s how I particularly find more of the inner that helps make sense of the outer. It’s practice.

I post insights on my daily blog, Human to Human. It’s journalling and learning in public, Monday through Thursday, in which I post current learnings (taking sporadic weeks off to write longer pieces or to rest). Posts speak on varied aspects of participative leadership practices, insights, and human to human depth. You can sign up to receive new posts by entering your email on the blog page.

Published Work

In 2024 I published Gifts of Circle: Connection, Courage, Compassionate Action. I loved writing about Circle as such foundational work for so many of us. I loved honoring my teachers and colleagues. I loved sharing insights in four sections of short essays: 1) Circle’s Bigger Purpose, 2) Circle’s Practice, 3) Circles First Requirements, and 4) Circle’s Possibility for Men.

In 2023 I published In My Nature. It’s a collection of ten poems that tease out invitation to know inner nature in relationship with outer nature and vice-versa.

In 2022, I published my second collection of poetry, Most Mornings. This collection offers verse to both my work and to my communal and solo living. As I describe in the Introduction, “This collection of poems comes from some of my sense-making that so often happens in the morning, nurtured by overnight sleep. These poems sample practices. They sample learnings. They sample insights and discoveries. They sample dilemmas and concerns. They range from simple and clear appreciations to more complex and murky wonderings about how to be in the world of these times. I offer these verses to invite essences to lead, as poetry often does, and to invite discovery of what can only live between the lines.”

Previously (March 2020) I published A Cadence of Despair: Poems and Reflections on Heartbreak, Loss and Renewal. This is a book about coming into relationship with despair, including some of my experience with descent and ascent. It’s highly personal material that maps the personal to the universal.

I also enjoy writing articles, thought papers, poems and the reflection that is participating in conversational podcasts.

More on My Articles & Newsletters

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More on My Poems